in my opinion we should be pushing back on what there doing here. The if its a trend is a bad one to set.
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set so you split the race stats means that with no errata of the existing races we have 2 different official races unless you purchase this box set for the next few months?
seems underhanded and anti consumer and i really hope this doesn't start a trend of no releasing the errata for old content when its changed.
if a new player(which this must be marketed to? if not new who else? these aren't the updated xanahars or tashas?? so why would i buy a second book? even is they were updated why would i buy them agian?) buys this to start playing what DM is going to have MotM yet? every player and DM i know has the other books and paying 150+ for this is a none starter for most of us. plus no VTT or online integration for 4 months..... so you will have a new player that has a race and the only want the rest of us can be part of that is if why also spend 180 bucks for one book. no errata of existing races so the rest of us can enjoy the same races we have in the rest of the books. so unless you pay a premium then you are splitting your player base over races that exist in previous material and new material.
Can someone explain to me why they would do this for the benefit of the customers?
Admittedly, no one from WOTC is likely to see this post.
D&DBeyond has no power over WHEN they can publish things on their site.
I don't really see this "splitting your player base" to be honest. Yes, there are some decent updates to older races, but not game breaking from what I've seen, or something you couldn't change/ignore on your current character sheets.
Does it suck that we that use digital books have to wait? Yeah, it does.
D&DBeyond has already stated that the new book is just that. A new book, not errata for the old races. Those will still remain, with the updated races being added. So yes, you'll essentially have two different races in the character creation menu.
It's a collectors box for a lot of people. That's why they would purchase it again. Or for people who own few/none of the books as between the two box sets, it contains the major core books to run 5e.
Some DMs will buy it, others won't. Some buy all digital, some buy all physical, and some buy both.
If you're playing in person, if one person has the book because they bought the box set, borrow it from them, that's how you all can use it.
If you're playing only online, as I said above, the changes aren't so ground breaking you can't edit sheets/just ignore parts that aren't there anymore.
Can someone explain to me why they would do this for the benefit of the customers?
They're not doing this for the benefit of the customers. But then, not everything a company does has to be for their customers' benefit and while I don't like how they're marketing this product either it's hardly the worst thing ever. It's 4 months of waiting so WotC can make some money from a collector's edition, that's all. If nobody in your group buys the set, everything stays the same for at least another 4 months for you. If somebody does and you don't mind not using DDB, you get to choose which version you use (assuming someone in the group has the original books). If somebody buys the set and you do want to use DDB, just homebrew the parts you need - you won't be able to publish them, but that's not necessary for everyone in the campaign to be able to use it and adjusting a few racial qualities is dead easy (the changes to player races are absolutely minimal anyway). No need to blow a gasket over this whole thing.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
As I've written elsewhere, folks who care about the future of D&D likely already own Tashas and Xanathar's so forcing people who care about the future to make redundant purchases for a "first look" is kinda bad community relations. That said May isn't that far off and I don't see massive rifts opening in the sky of anyone's game. Am I anxiously running my campaign knowing there's a book out there that might change some of my players' characters' stats or how I may run monsters? No. I've mentioned to a Hobgoblin player and a Tabaxi player that new versions of their races may be available and they're welcome to avail themselves of them or we can grandfather them in under their current stats.
This isn't a game breaking book for existing games. Someone playing a game with MMM isn't playing D&D "better" than those who aren't. And I don't see anything on the publicaton calendar for WotC that will threaten me into feeling like I'm playing the game wrong without MMM. I don't think the alarmism is warranted.
I'm more curious as DDB consumer how they'l accomodate the difference, but now knowing that MMM will be kept distinct from existing iterations of content simply leaves me curious and interested in how it will work, optimistically because I don't think MMM is going to be the last "future looking" book between now and 2024 and I'd like to see a good system in place to accomodate the original books as well as these new "transitional" books I'm anticipating. Things as they are, I'll likely buy the physical book (but likely not at release lacking a retailer incentive cover) and homebrew what I want to adopt untless I'm particularly impressed with how DDB implements the new stat blocks etc.
Im not complaining about it not being on DND beyond, although that's part of it but not the point thats jsut a offshoot of this practice of putting the rules behind a box set or not available.
creating this artificial scarcity to sell more box sets. giving people less options unless they pay 3 times the price of one book. Yes you can just create or pirate it which is what people will do to bypass this, another point on how this is not a good thing.
the general theme you're getting at here is that its an ok thing for the game to have this be a trend going forward?
my end question of how this is good for the customers or the game in general still stands.
3) ...giving people less options unless they pay 3 times the price of one book
2) the general theme you're getting at here is that its an ok thing for the game to have this be a trend going forward?
1) my end question of how this is good for the customers or the game in general still stands.
In reverse order, since that makes more sense in my mind:
1) Again, it's not. Nobody is saying it is.
2) Again², it's not². It's not an ok thing, and it's also not a trend going forward. One instance does not a trend make, and it's not like the existing catalog offers a ton more options to do something similar again, unless you see a way for them to repackage setting books and somehow make that sell. I'd love to see a better Realms book than the SCAG and maybe the M:tG books could be bundled, but neither is even remotely likely.
3) It's not fewer options. It's delayed options.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set
They said right in the announcement that the delay was because of the worldwide problems every publisher is facing right now. It’s not some underhanded scheme. If it was, I really fail to see the brilliant strategy in releasing a gift set an entire month after Christmas.
The Avatar RPG faced delays because they literally could not find enough cardboard to make the books! WotC planned on releasing MotM in late November like their last gift set which would make a whole lot more sense than end of January. But they couldn’t. They have said all this publicly yet people keep trying to make it into some underhanded conspiracy. Publishing delays and shortages have been talked about in the news for months.
There’s a pandemic still going on making shipping and supply chains be in terrible shape, especially for publishing books. Nothing devious going on.
As has been pointed out elsewhere by many people, including upper WotC figures like Jeremy Crawford, as well as being literally printed in core rulebooks, that anything published is a suggestion and you can run your own game however you want. There is no "schism" that comes from multiple versions of anything, including races, being available. Those two (or more) different versions are just multiple options that you can choose from to use in your game, where the only ultimate authority on what is and is not allowed is the DM for that game.
Whether the options are necessary or even good, from both lore/flavor and game design perspectives, is subject to personal interpretation and opinion. Personally, most of what I've seen has my opinions leaning toward unnecessary to just dumb, so I currently have no intention of buying any version of MotM.
Im not complaining about it not being on DND beyond, although that's part of it but not the point thats jsut a offshoot of this practice of putting the rules behind a box set or not available.
I know you weren't. I'm just trying to create some productive thinking in this thread as there's, as pretty much every reply you've received points out, no calls for alarm out of ... whatever your concern is.
creating this artificial scarcity to sell more box sets. giving people less options unless they pay 3 times the price of one book. Yes you can just create or pirate it which is what people will do to bypass this, another point on how this is not a good thing.
The former sentence isn't really artificial scarcity so much as early access. If you don't want to buy into the luxury package, you wait a few months for the features. Waiting a few months to buy a book for myself to see if it's worth adding to my game doesn't affect any of the games I'm currently running in the slightest. Does it yours? Most DMs, I hope your realize, will take a sourcebook either from WotC or a third party and decide how to incorporate or even whether to incorporate it into their games. No one's missing out on anything or as I said no one's "playing D&D incorrectly" as a result of (what I'll call your concern) a "MMM deficit."
the general theme you're getting at here is that its an ok thing for the game to have this be a trend going forward?
I'm a bit confused how you construe trends via one instance. Pattern recognition doesn't work that way. Paranoid anxiety does. This is the second boxed set in 5es history (yes, there's different iterations of the core boxed sets but they're all PHB, DMG, and MMM). It was marketed as a gift set, not "WotC secret packaging innovation going forward that will deprive those without the cash resources to buy 2/3 redundant book bundles of early access to new content." I'd be surprised if we see another packaging attempt like this in the near future. But you're free to prophesize the plummet of the stratosphere.
my end question of how this is good for the customers or the game in general still stands.
My guess is, folks at Hasbro who keep track of sales figures know that PHB, DMG and MM are probably the biggest sellers of 5e, and the boxed set of those is competitive with those who buy the books piecemeal. All the books after that don't have the same sales numbers. Someone on that business side of things probably got with product managers to see how they may be able to encourage players to buy more than those three core. Probably using the fact that three is a cool number and folks will buy into sequel trilogies, folks figured "well hey what could be a package for folks who already have the core be?" D&D Studio: "Well, I'd say the rules expansions would be Xanathar's and Tasha's no doubt, we have two sort of follow up monster books, one we've been doing a lot of errata with ... we're also trying to revamp the way we do stat blocks..." so you package the X and T and create a merged Mord's and Volo's with a teaser of the future for folks who want to buy in. For some consumers (like relatives buying their D&D core books playing kid an upgrade to their set) this is a good. In your articulation of this product as a personal injury you're failing to recognize that the consumers that make up the broad market of D&D aren't exclusively represented by you.
D&D is a game of imagination, an active one can easily figure the above out, others go on less plausible speculative paths and try to create outrage threads.
I don't know how to prove it, but I'm willing to bet MMM would have sold better had they released it within a month of this boxed set. I don't think this is harming consumers, I think it actually may lead to a lot of players beginning to "wait until WotC has it figured out" as these "future looking" books are put out there. But that's also not a game breaker.
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set
They said right in the announcement that the delay was because of the worldwide problems every publisher is facing right now. It’s not some underhanded scheme. If it was, I really fail to see the brilliant strategy in releasing a gift set an entire month after Christmas.
The Avatar RPG faced delays because they literally could not find enough cardboard to make the books! WotC planned on releasing MotM in late November like their last gift set which would make a whole lot more sense than end of January. But they couldn’t. They have said all this publicly yet people keep trying to make it into some underhanded conspiracy. Publishing delays and shortages have been talked about in the news for months.
There’s a pandemic still going on making shipping and supply chains be in terrible shape, especially for publishing books. Nothing devious going on.
The reality of publishing and shipping aside, I believe the OP is up in arms about having to wait for MMM if they're not buying the boxed set. MMM was never going to be released for individual purpose alongside the release of the boxed set. There was always going to be a wait between the gift set and the solo release. It's not a game breaking move, but as I've said binding (or I guess inserting alongside) a glimpse at "D&D's future" with two books that would likely be redundant purchases among those who identify as heavily investied in D&D's future is kinda a hamfisted move on WotC part in the community relations department. But again, not a game ender.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set
They said right in the announcement that the delay was because of the worldwide problems every publisher is facing right now. It’s not some underhanded scheme. If it was, I really fail to see the brilliant strategy in releasing a gift set an entire month after Christmas.
The Avatar RPG faced delays because they literally could not find enough cardboard to make the books! WotC planned on releasing MotM in late November like their last gift set which would make a whole lot more sense than end of January. But they couldn’t. They have said all this publicly yet people keep trying to make it into some underhanded conspiracy. Publishing delays and shortages have been talked about in the news for months.
There’s a pandemic still going on making shipping and supply chains be in terrible shape, especially for publishing books. Nothing devious going on.
The reality of publishing and shipping aside, I believe the OP is up in arms about having to wait for MMM if they're not buying the boxed set. MMM was never going to be released for individual purpose alongside the release of the boxed set. There was always going to be a wait between the gift set and the solo release. It's not a game breaking move, but as I've said binding (or I guess inserting alongside) a glimpse at "D&D's future" with two books that would likely be redundant purchases among those who identify as heavily investied in D&D's future is kinda a hamfisted move on WotC part in the community relations department. But again, not a game ender.
Is there confirmation they were never going to be released together? I see everyone assuming that, but following the conversations from day of the product reveal on, I have never read or heard them say the original plan all along was releasing them separate. If there’s official statement of that, I’m happy to be corrected, of course. Either way, I agree, it’s a weird thing to get mad over.
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set
They said right in the announcement that the delay was because of the worldwide problems every publisher is facing right now. It’s not some underhanded scheme. If it was, I really fail to see the brilliant strategy in releasing a gift set an entire month after Christmas.
The Avatar RPG faced delays because they literally could not find enough cardboard to make the books! WotC planned on releasing MotM in late November like their last gift set which would make a whole lot more sense than end of January. But they couldn’t. They have said all this publicly yet people keep trying to make it into some underhanded conspiracy. Publishing delays and shortages have been talked about in the news for months.
There’s a pandemic still going on making shipping and supply chains be in terrible shape, especially for publishing books. Nothing devious going on.
The reality of publishing and shipping aside, I believe the OP is up in arms about having to wait for MMM if they're not buying the boxed set. MMM was never going to be released for individual purpose alongside the release of the boxed set. There was always going to be a wait between the gift set and the solo release. It's not a game breaking move, but as I've said binding (or I guess inserting alongside) a glimpse at "D&D's future" with two books that would likely be redundant purchases among those who identify as heavily investied in D&D's future is kinda a hamfisted move on WotC part in the community relations department. But again, not a game ender.
Is there confirmation they were never going to be released together? I see everyone assuming that, but following the conversations from day of the product reveal on, I have never read or heard them say the original plan all along was releasing them separate. If there’s official statement of that, I’m happy to be corrected, of course. Either way, I agree, it’s a weird thing to get mad over.
When they announced it, it was going to be a separate release, with the individual copies being released at some future date (that in January they announced to be in May). What they were thinking before they announced etc is anyone's guess, but as of the announcement to the public it was intended to be the collectors edition first with a later releas for individual copies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set
They said right in the announcement that the delay was because of the worldwide problems every publisher is facing right now. It’s not some underhanded scheme. If it was, I really fail to see the brilliant strategy in releasing a gift set an entire month after Christmas.
The Avatar RPG faced delays because they literally could not find enough cardboard to make the books! WotC planned on releasing MotM in late November like their last gift set which would make a whole lot more sense than end of January. But they couldn’t. They have said all this publicly yet people keep trying to make it into some underhanded conspiracy. Publishing delays and shortages have been talked about in the news for months.
There’s a pandemic still going on making shipping and supply chains be in terrible shape, especially for publishing books. Nothing devious going on.
The reality of publishing and shipping aside, I believe the OP is up in arms about having to wait for MMM if they're not buying the boxed set. MMM was never going to be released for individual purpose alongside the release of the boxed set. There was always going to be a wait between the gift set and the solo release. It's not a game breaking move, but as I've said binding (or I guess inserting alongside) a glimpse at "D&D's future" with two books that would likely be redundant purchases among those who identify as heavily investied in D&D's future is kinda a hamfisted move on WotC part in the community relations department. But again, not a game ender.
Is there confirmation they were never going to be released together? I see everyone assuming that, but following the conversations from day of the product reveal on, I have never read or heard them say the original plan all along was releasing them separate. If there’s official statement of that, I’m happy to be corrected, of course. Either way, I agree, it’s a weird thing to get mad over.
It's mostly conjecture but there is no reason, even in the present supply chain, both the slip case and 1/3 of it could have been made available at the same time. Basis of the conjecture:
1.) The reveal of the boxed set at Celebration: "yeah we wanted this in time for the holidays, but not happening sorry about that, these times we live in..." and when they drilled into MMM (folks, stop calling it MotM, MMM is cooler and makes it the MM + M) it was said, "and yes, this will be available individually sometime after the boxed set." I'm pretty sure they would have said "we wanted two items for you all to have for the holidays, but we didn't" if that was the intent. So I'm leaning to that indicating they were doing their calculus on how much they can milk the box from "the expansion market' (folks who don't have these rules) and "the whales" (the folks who will buy anything to be "complete" as soon as possible). Winninger is a careful puppet master of Crawford wordsmith.
2.) Hasbro production capacity as communiicated and observed by game store proprietors and employees who geek out on supply chain and inventory. Strixhaven had a LOT higher print run than Witchlight. Their purchase, literally, into the printing world is huge and they have a greater ability to get what they want than any other player in the field aside maybe if Amazon bought DriveThru and started doing print on demand (don't see that happening). Hasbro/WotC routinely has ordered vast quantities of the same book with different covers with every book release. When everything shows up is not in control, but having one book slipped into a set and another book with the non foil and non retailer incentive covers showing up at the same time doesn't seem to have been outside of Hasbro's capacity even in the present world logistics.
3.) Year before Celebration Winninger enthusiasm for new product formats. Personal theory, but I'm pretty sure WotC is taking copious notes from the experiences of Beedle and Grimm, that relationship clearly leading to the Strahd Revamped boxed set. They know there's is a market segment willing to pay more dollar for the TTRPG material than Hasbro/WotC has priced with its main line product range for D&D. I think this was part of that experiment into how much they can rake from "premium buyers" ($180 is nothing for someone spending 7 grand on a gaming table, they're the same folks who pay a GM $300 a session and will float the cost for whatever minis or other accessories the GM wants + food and Venmoed tips from other players, these folks exist and Hasbro wants more buy in from them too) as well as whales who will buy to say "first" so established a window to maximize sales of one product at the expense of universal release.
It's a cynical analysis, I'll admit, but the boxed set the packaging was the star of that event ending announcement, and I reckon it was always going to be regardless of the state of the printing presses and shipping lanes.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Even if the solo book was out now there would already be two different official versions of these races and monsters because WotC is officially not issuing errata on the old versions to update them. The release date is irrelevant.
It's a cynical analysis, I'll admit, but the boxed set the packaging was the star of that event ending announcement, and I reckon it was always going to be regardless of the state of the printing presses and shipping lanes.
There's a cutoff point, a minimum number of items sold, below which it makes no sense financially to produce and market something. I'm fairly sure that even with the premium market share being out there, WotC felt a gift set with those contents at that price point° was unlikely to sell enough without the early adopter advantage to bring more buyers in.
°edit: a price point somewhat ironically necessitated by that low volume of sales too
in my opinion we should be pushing back on what there doing here. The if its a trend is a bad one to set.
holding monsters of the multiverse back for 4 months unless you purchase 180+ CAD box set so you split the race stats means that with no errata of the existing races we have 2 different official races unless you purchase this box set for the next few months?
seems underhanded and anti consumer and i really hope this doesn't start a trend of no releasing the errata for old content when its changed.
if a new player(which this must be marketed to? if not new who else? these aren't the updated xanahars or tashas?? so why would i buy a second book? even is they were updated why would i buy them agian?) buys this to start playing what DM is going to have MotM yet? every player and DM i know has the other books and paying 150+ for this is a none starter for most of us. plus no VTT or online integration for 4 months..... so you will have a new player that has a race and the only want the rest of us can be part of that is if why also spend 180 bucks for one book. no errata of existing races so the rest of us can enjoy the same races we have in the rest of the books. so unless you pay a premium then you are splitting your player base over races that exist in previous material and new material.
Can someone explain to me why they would do this for the benefit of the customers?
Admittedly, no one from WOTC is likely to see this post.
D&DBeyond has no power over WHEN they can publish things on their site.
I don't really see this "splitting your player base" to be honest. Yes, there are some decent updates to older races, but not game breaking from what I've seen, or something you couldn't change/ignore on your current character sheets.
Does it suck that we that use digital books have to wait? Yeah, it does.
D&DBeyond has already stated that the new book is just that. A new book, not errata for the old races. Those will still remain, with the updated races being added. So yes, you'll essentially have two different races in the character creation menu.
It's a collectors box for a lot of people. That's why they would purchase it again. Or for people who own few/none of the books as between the two box sets, it contains the major core books to run 5e.
Some DMs will buy it, others won't. Some buy all digital, some buy all physical, and some buy both.
If you're playing in person, if one person has the book because they bought the box set, borrow it from them, that's how you all can use it.
If you're playing only online, as I said above, the changes aren't so ground breaking you can't edit sheets/just ignore parts that aren't there anymore.
They're not doing this for the benefit of the customers. But then, not everything a company does has to be for their customers' benefit and while I don't like how they're marketing this product either it's hardly the worst thing ever. It's 4 months of waiting so WotC can make some money from a collector's edition, that's all. If nobody in your group buys the set, everything stays the same for at least another 4 months for you. If somebody does and you don't mind not using DDB, you get to choose which version you use (assuming someone in the group has the original books). If somebody buys the set and you do want to use DDB, just homebrew the parts you need - you won't be able to publish them, but that's not necessary for everyone in the campaign to be able to use it and adjusting a few racial qualities is dead easy (the changes to player races are absolutely minimal anyway). No need to blow a gasket over this whole thing.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
As I've written elsewhere, folks who care about the future of D&D likely already own Tashas and Xanathar's so forcing people who care about the future to make redundant purchases for a "first look" is kinda bad community relations. That said May isn't that far off and I don't see massive rifts opening in the sky of anyone's game. Am I anxiously running my campaign knowing there's a book out there that might change some of my players' characters' stats or how I may run monsters? No. I've mentioned to a Hobgoblin player and a Tabaxi player that new versions of their races may be available and they're welcome to avail themselves of them or we can grandfather them in under their current stats.
This isn't a game breaking book for existing games. Someone playing a game with MMM isn't playing D&D "better" than those who aren't. And I don't see anything on the publicaton calendar for WotC that will threaten me into feeling like I'm playing the game wrong without MMM. I don't think the alarmism is warranted.
I'm more curious as DDB consumer how they'l accomodate the difference, but now knowing that MMM will be kept distinct from existing iterations of content simply leaves me curious and interested in how it will work, optimistically because I don't think MMM is going to be the last "future looking" book between now and 2024 and I'd like to see a good system in place to accomodate the original books as well as these new "transitional" books I'm anticipating. Things as they are, I'll likely buy the physical book (but likely not at release lacking a retailer incentive cover) and homebrew what I want to adopt untless I'm particularly impressed with how DDB implements the new stat blocks etc.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Im not complaining about it not being on DND beyond, although that's part of it but not the point thats jsut a offshoot of this practice of putting the rules behind a box set or not available.
creating this artificial scarcity to sell more box sets. giving people less options unless they pay 3 times the price of one book. Yes you can just create or pirate it which is what people will do to bypass this, another point on how this is not a good thing.
the general theme you're getting at here is that its an ok thing for the game to have this be a trend going forward?
my end question of how this is good for the customers or the game in general still stands.
In reverse order, since that makes more sense in my mind:
1) Again, it's not. Nobody is saying it is.
2) Again², it's not². It's not an ok thing, and it's also not a trend going forward. One instance does not a trend make, and it's not like the existing catalog offers a ton more options to do something similar again, unless you see a way for them to repackage setting books and somehow make that sell. I'd love to see a better Realms book than the SCAG and maybe the M:tG books could be bundled, but neither is even remotely likely.
3) It's not fewer options. It's delayed options.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
They said right in the announcement that the delay was because of the worldwide problems every publisher is facing right now. It’s not some underhanded scheme. If it was, I really fail to see the brilliant strategy in releasing a gift set an entire month after Christmas.
The Avatar RPG faced delays because they literally could not find enough cardboard to make the books! WotC planned on releasing MotM in late November like their last gift set which would make a whole lot more sense than end of January. But they couldn’t. They have said all this publicly yet people keep trying to make it into some underhanded conspiracy. Publishing delays and shortages have been talked about in the news for months.
There’s a pandemic still going on making shipping and supply chains be in terrible shape, especially for publishing books. Nothing devious going on.
As has been pointed out elsewhere by many people, including upper WotC figures like Jeremy Crawford, as well as being literally printed in core rulebooks, that anything published is a suggestion and you can run your own game however you want. There is no "schism" that comes from multiple versions of anything, including races, being available. Those two (or more) different versions are just multiple options that you can choose from to use in your game, where the only ultimate authority on what is and is not allowed is the DM for that game.
Whether the options are necessary or even good, from both lore/flavor and game design perspectives, is subject to personal interpretation and opinion. Personally, most of what I've seen has my opinions leaning toward unnecessary to just dumb, so I currently have no intention of buying any version of MotM.
I know you weren't. I'm just trying to create some productive thinking in this thread as there's, as pretty much every reply you've received points out, no calls for alarm out of ... whatever your concern is.
The former sentence isn't really artificial scarcity so much as early access. If you don't want to buy into the luxury package, you wait a few months for the features. Waiting a few months to buy a book for myself to see if it's worth adding to my game doesn't affect any of the games I'm currently running in the slightest. Does it yours? Most DMs, I hope your realize, will take a sourcebook either from WotC or a third party and decide how to incorporate or even whether to incorporate it into their games. No one's missing out on anything or as I said no one's "playing D&D incorrectly" as a result of (what I'll call your concern) a "MMM deficit."
I'm a bit confused how you construe trends via one instance. Pattern recognition doesn't work that way. Paranoid anxiety does. This is the second boxed set in 5es history (yes, there's different iterations of the core boxed sets but they're all PHB, DMG, and MMM). It was marketed as a gift set, not "WotC secret packaging innovation going forward that will deprive those without the cash resources to buy 2/3 redundant book bundles of early access to new content." I'd be surprised if we see another packaging attempt like this in the near future. But you're free to prophesize the plummet of the stratosphere.
My guess is, folks at Hasbro who keep track of sales figures know that PHB, DMG and MM are probably the biggest sellers of 5e, and the boxed set of those is competitive with those who buy the books piecemeal. All the books after that don't have the same sales numbers. Someone on that business side of things probably got with product managers to see how they may be able to encourage players to buy more than those three core. Probably using the fact that three is a cool number and folks will buy into sequel trilogies, folks figured "well hey what could be a package for folks who already have the core be?" D&D Studio: "Well, I'd say the rules expansions would be Xanathar's and Tasha's no doubt, we have two sort of follow up monster books, one we've been doing a lot of errata with ... we're also trying to revamp the way we do stat blocks..." so you package the X and T and create a merged Mord's and Volo's with a teaser of the future for folks who want to buy in. For some consumers (like relatives buying their D&D core books playing kid an upgrade to their set) this is a good. In your articulation of this product as a personal injury you're failing to recognize that the consumers that make up the broad market of D&D aren't exclusively represented by you.
D&D is a game of imagination, an active one can easily figure the above out, others go on less plausible speculative paths and try to create outrage threads.
I don't know how to prove it, but I'm willing to bet MMM would have sold better had they released it within a month of this boxed set. I don't think this is harming consumers, I think it actually may lead to a lot of players beginning to "wait until WotC has it figured out" as these "future looking" books are put out there. But that's also not a game breaker.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The reality of publishing and shipping aside, I believe the OP is up in arms about having to wait for MMM if they're not buying the boxed set. MMM was never going to be released for individual purpose alongside the release of the boxed set. There was always going to be a wait between the gift set and the solo release. It's not a game breaking move, but as I've said binding (or I guess inserting alongside) a glimpse at "D&D's future" with two books that would likely be redundant purchases among those who identify as heavily investied in D&D's future is kinda a hamfisted move on WotC part in the community relations department. But again, not a game ender.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Is there confirmation they were never going to be released together? I see everyone assuming that, but following the conversations from day of the product reveal on, I have never read or heard them say the original plan all along was releasing them separate. If there’s official statement of that, I’m happy to be corrected, of course. Either way, I agree, it’s a weird thing to get mad over.
When they announced it, it was going to be a separate release, with the individual copies being released at some future date (that in January they announced to be in May). What they were thinking before they announced etc is anyone's guess, but as of the announcement to the public it was intended to be the collectors edition first with a later releas for individual copies.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's mostly conjecture but there is no reason, even in the present supply chain, both the slip case and 1/3 of it could have been made available at the same time. Basis of the conjecture:
1.) The reveal of the boxed set at Celebration: "yeah we wanted this in time for the holidays, but not happening sorry about that, these times we live in..." and when they drilled into MMM (folks, stop calling it MotM, MMM is cooler and makes it the MM + M) it was said, "and yes, this will be available individually sometime after the boxed set." I'm pretty sure they would have said "we wanted two items for you all to have for the holidays, but we didn't" if that was the intent. So I'm leaning to that indicating they were doing their calculus on how much they can milk the box from "the expansion market' (folks who don't have these rules) and "the whales" (the folks who will buy anything to be "complete" as soon as possible). Winninger is a careful
puppet master of Crawfordwordsmith.2.) Hasbro production capacity as communiicated and observed by game store proprietors and employees who geek out on supply chain and inventory. Strixhaven had a LOT higher print run than Witchlight. Their purchase, literally, into the printing world is huge and they have a greater ability to get what they want than any other player in the field aside maybe if Amazon bought DriveThru and started doing print on demand (don't see that happening). Hasbro/WotC routinely has ordered vast quantities of the same book with different covers with every book release. When everything shows up is not in control, but having one book slipped into a set and another book with the non foil and non retailer incentive covers showing up at the same time doesn't seem to have been outside of Hasbro's capacity even in the present world logistics.
3.) Year before Celebration Winninger enthusiasm for new product formats. Personal theory, but I'm pretty sure WotC is taking copious notes from the experiences of Beedle and Grimm, that relationship clearly leading to the Strahd Revamped boxed set. They know there's is a market segment willing to pay more dollar for the TTRPG material than Hasbro/WotC has priced with its main line product range for D&D. I think this was part of that experiment into how much they can rake from "premium buyers" ($180 is nothing for someone spending 7 grand on a gaming table, they're the same folks who pay a GM $300 a session and will float the cost for whatever minis or other accessories the GM wants + food and Venmoed tips from other players, these folks exist and Hasbro wants more buy in from them too) as well as whales who will buy to say "first" so established a window to maximize sales of one product at the expense of universal release.
It's a cynical analysis, I'll admit, but the boxed set the packaging was the star of that event ending announcement, and I reckon it was always going to be regardless of the state of the printing presses and shipping lanes.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Even if the solo book was out now there would already be two different official versions of these races and monsters because WotC is officially not issuing errata on the old versions to update them. The release date is irrelevant.
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There's a cutoff point, a minimum number of items sold, below which it makes no sense financially to produce and market something. I'm fairly sure that even with the premium market share being out there, WotC felt a gift set with those contents at that price point° was unlikely to sell enough without the early adopter advantage to bring more buyers in.
°edit: a price point somewhat ironically necessitated by that low volume of sales too
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